# How Big the whorl *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 06 Apr 1999* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### m.driussi *06 Apr 1999, 14:40* Roy, Actually I thought the estimates on the size of the whorl couldn't be reconciled with the text primarily because I kept botching the calculations (while all the scientists snickered). Which is to say, I don't believe a "clean and competant" estimation has been done. For a broad example unrelated to any current threads: If Gregory Feeley is dismissive of the science content of TBOTNS, alluding to never seen enormous tides on Urth that must be caused by Lune's proximity, that is fine since it is something of a toss-off line--the main point of his NYRSF essay is familial matters in Severian's life (a far cry from physics). But I sense a problem if others take up this toss-off comment as an untested, unexamined proof and thus proceed from a flawed premise to "prove" things that Feeley never seriously attempted. But this has become tedius. Goodbye! =mantis= ---